Favorite buyers
Let's get some positivity in this sub. Who are your favorite buyers and why? I know some of you might have something to say about my favorites and that's okay, just sharing my experiences. As always YMMV. I'll start:
Essintial - I work with three different FOCs and whenever they have a job in my area through them, I usually get first right of refusal on jobs. They don't even post the WO until after they call me, usually routing it to me on the phone with them. They negotiate well internally and I can usually squeeze a few extra bucks out of them since I've done a ton of work for them, over 60 WOs in the last two months.
ShippingSource - I've never spoke a WO manager directly through them, only via chat. I randomly found them and bid a job for a small cooler installation and completed it in under an hour (they wanted 2 people and 2 hours on site). Paid me $240. Now whenever they come up, I review them and message them directly and they usually approve whatever I ask. I also do a lot of rework for them on people who half complete jobs. Did one yesterday for $390 driving an hour to install a cooler and fix the prior techs mess up. This is why they advertise $100 for a chiller install. The people they get are shit. They also pay out within 24 hours of job completion, so that's cool. I was paid out this morning already for yesterday's job. Mind you I've also done about two dozen work orders for them, so YMMV.
NEC - I might get shit for this one, but I've been doing most of the 7-11 rollouts and equipment in my area and they have super flexible terms for completion when you accept, so i can easily stack these jobs and make $100-200 on my way home from another job changing out an iPad and shipping the old one back. Their telephone support is all eastern countries, but they answer the phone right away when you call in. The only con I have is about how they send the WOs out. They bundle them usually 3 or 4 at a time, so you can't counter on it. Usually I'll message them and they'll update the pricing to make it worth it to swing in and perform the job. If you can't get them done in one day, I just send a message through FN with my updated time frame and they adjust it within minutes.
Pivital - They're a relatively new buyer for me, only done a handful of WOs, but their WO managers are super nice with me. Mostly low voltage cabling inspections and pre-install surveys I've done. Easily stackable for some and they pay decent terms once you're in with them and proven you are reliable.
Honestly, reliability is what these buyers are after. I learned you're gonna take some of these jobs at poverty rates when you have no experience on the platform. The low rates usually are to discourage and weed out the trunk slammers looking to make a quick buck. Unfortunately it causes us to have to keep in constant contact with the buyers until we're on their radar to get decent compensation. I’ve been doing this full time since June and I'm learning the ropes, but i have quite a few buyers on retainer.
u/setnev — 18 days ago
Buyers: Take notice.
NYS is NOT NYC. 100 miles takes over 2 hours. This was my route yesterday. When we request trip charges in NY, this is why. While these 4 jobs paid well for each and i got a trip charge on them, but this is why we don't drive for free. I drive these back country two lane roads, through mountains, curving through the natural land. Its beautiful, but again, we don't drive for free, so please don't take offense when we counter with travel.
u/setnev — 20 days ago
YouTube Did Me Dirty
On Friday, I uploaded a YT Short to my Made with Plastic channel and then all hell broke loose on every channel I own. I got an email stating all of my channels were removed due to Policy Violations, specifically Circumvention. This was news to me, none of my channels has had an issue with policy violations, except for one. This is why my story begins on my journey of getting my accounts restored.
In November of 2023, I was hit with a token stealer that allowed hackers to gain access to my primary Gmail account. Over the last few years, I did several videos on cybersecurity, device hacking, IoT, and automotive journalism and had gained quite the following on my channels, hundreds, not hundreds of thousands. When the hackers gained access to my account, they also gained access to every single YouTube channel I'd owned. Still to this day, I cannot understand how they were able to circumvent Google's Titan-based physical security device system that I used on my account and every single one of my Gmail accounts, and frankly Google was tight lipped about it when I approached them about it. I digress, so the hackers took over my accounts and tried to upload crypto scams, Elon Tesla scams, etc before I took them down and resecured my account. It was less than 4 hours. The damage was done and YouTube suspended my entire portfolio. This was before Made with Plastic, Nexus Hydroponics, and H6 Computers was added. I was able to appeal the account, they restored my primary access and removed the offending content and restored my accounts! Yay, or so I thought. Two weeks later, I upload a video on one of my channels, now I have my accounts suspended yet again. I appealed it. This time they restored two of my four subchannels (VideoGPT and Beyond STEM). Everything IoT and Hacking the World are permanently gone, they said. Great, glad to know the hackers can mess you up and you pay the consequences because Google's AI thinks everyone is a scammer, even the legitimate account owner.
Two years later I created Made with Plastic, a 3d printing focused channel, and Nexus Hydroponics, which demoed all the cool 3d printed hydroponic stuff I was printing and using. No issues there, uploaded a bunch of videos, started to get followings on both, everything is great, almost to the 1000 subscriber thresholds. Until Friday, which is where this thread starts. The appeals process is 100% AI and automated. Every single appeal I make, I get an email saying:
| Hi Hacking the World, |
|---|
| We're sorry to hear you're having issues with your channel. If you believe your channel has been compromised, please submit this form within the next 5 days. |
| Our teams will use the info you provide to start investigating the issue, and to take action that could prevent you from losing access to support. If you don't submit the form within 5 days, we won't be able to proceed and will need to close your appeal. |
| We’ll keep you posted throughout every step. |
So, there's a few things I notice here. Hacking the World is the channel that YouTube took down after the scammers posted content on there. The video I uploaded was from my Made with Plastic account that belongs to the email account under the first channel on the list (Alt+Tab Distraction) that was compromised 3 years ago. Second, when I go to the form, it takes me to a form telling me that I need the channel ID and then further down the form it tells me that if the hacking attempt was over 9 months, they might not be able to recover the account. It was 3 years ago and Hacking the World isn't the account I care about. I am at an impasse here and Google/YouTube is absolutely zero help. If there are any Google/YouTube support people in the comments, my case ID is 25240341641. Don't know what to do from here. Every account I created is suspended like I am some criminal. I have been active on YouTube, my face on camera in all my videos, since 2010. I have videos eligible for a driver's license in many states on my primary channel, but Google's AI thinks it knows better.
u/setnev — 25 days ago
This is insulting
I keep getting these WO routed to me because my work vehicle is a pickup. They want me to drive 145 miles, pickup their crap and drive it 96 miles to Pittsburgh, and then me drive 4 hours home another 250 miles.
Oh and they're paying $100.
That computes to about $10 an hour or $0.20 a mile. I always counter them like $1000 but they've never accepted it.
u/setnev — 1 month ago
▲ 5 r/CX5
CX-5 Signature brake job
I am getting ready to do my wife's brake job on her 23 CX-5. It's the top trim Signature with the turbo and all the safety systems. I have read a bunch of things about the procedure on replacing the brakes and the only thing commonly mentioned was putting the parking brake into service mode. Are there any special procedures I need to follow for the automatic braking system?
I've got almost everything picked out for replacement parts. I am surprised the brakes made it to 52k before the front started to squeak squeak when she backed out of the driveway. They were original from the factory and I read that everyone who uses the automatic cruise experiences accelerated brake wear, usually having to replace their brakes every 30-40k miles.
u/setnev — 2 months ago